Short Story Book Club: Introduction

Welcome to the inaugural Short Story Book Club post. One of my goals here at The Dacian is to foster an environment rich in community and discussion, a network of readers and writers that share that can discuss novels, short stories, movies, and art across multiple platforms.

The Short Story Book Club is simple, every two weeks or so I will pick a short story for us to read and discuss across our blogs and social media. The idea is to foster conversation and promote the sort of work I find aesthetically and intellectually interesting. My hope is twofold, first I want to create a sort of intellectual back and forth that elevates the critical discussion around the work in order to build a critical framework for analyzing pieces from a counter-cultural conservative perspective. Second, by building a body of critique and discussion I hope to bring attention to both the work itself and to the larger community that for the most part lies outside the mainstream.

The Short Story Bookclub

I will choose a short story and make a post with the link for purchasing it approximately every two weeks. I will gladly take recommendations but unless I delegate the task to somebody else I will make the final decision, democracy is a dirty word in these parts. If you take part in this challenge you will have to buy short story collections. This isn’t a Marxist establishment or a soup kitchen, if you can’t afford the price of a kindle short story collection every two weeks you shouldn’t be taking part, this is a distinguished enterprise and we are trying to promote the well-being of writers we believe in.

Your only task is to read the story and comment here, your own blog, and across social media. Ideally, the stories we read together inspires great conversation that will take place across platforms.

All I ask is that you link back to this post and share the posts of all the participants, also that you share and discuss everything using the #shortstorybookclub tag on social media.

Hernstrom’s writing is the fantasy version of an underground death metal LP that you can only pick up at an invite-only exclusive show held in some cave in the middle of dark wood. Every story in his new collection is unbeatable but Mortu and Kyrus, while not my top favorite, is not only a fantastic ass-kicker but a direct assault on the moral degeneracy of mainstream science fiction and fantasy.